Page 25 of My Vampire Plus-One

I stared at his hand. Long-fingered and graceful. I wondered if he played the violin, or some other delicate musical instrument. He certainly had the hands for it.

It seemed entirely unfair that hands like these belonged to a man I would never see again after this wedding. I bet he could do allkindsof things with them.

Stop that, I chastised myself.This is not what this isabout.

“Why do you need my business card?” I asked, tearing my gaze away from his hands with difficulty. “And why do you assume I have one with me?”

“If we’re going through with this, we’ll need some way to contact each other,” he said. “I assume your business card has your contact info?”

Oh. Right.

“And I assume you have a business card with you,” he continued, “because you’re an accountant.”

“Ordinarily Iwouldhave business cards with me,” I conceded, thinking of the little metal business card holder I’d left in my office last night. “But I don’t have any with me now. I…haven’t been operating on all cylinders for a while.”

He made a sympathetic noise. He pulled out his cell phone, typed in a passcode, and then slid it across the table to me. “We’ll do this the old-fashioned way, then. Put your number in my phone.”

I glanced at the display. A stab of something more than surprise went through me when I saw the contacts already in his phone.

Partly because there were only two of them.

Mostly because I knew who they were.

Frederick Fitzwilliam I only knew by name. Cassie Greenberg, though, I’d known for years.

She’d been my brother’s best friend since they were kids. I hadn’t thought much of her when we were growing up. She’d always struck me as an extremely unserious person who accidentally fell into things instead of achieving anything through deliberate effort. But she’d always been nice, and a good friend to Sam for many years.

The last I’d heard, Cassie had found a steady job as an art teacher and had actually started dating Frederick. Which…

Well.

Good for her, I supposed.

Regardless, it was downright weird that the only two contacts in this man’s phone were my brother’s best friend and her boyfriend. No parents, no siblings—just Cassie and Frederick.

“How do you know Cassie?” I asked. This situation suddenly felt like too strange a series of coincidences toactuallybe coincidental. Running into this person twice in two days was bizarre enough. But this?

“You know Cassie, too?” The surprise in his expression was too genuine to be fake. Which was oddly reassuring. If this were all an elaborate setup to rob or murder me, he probably wouldn’t look and sound like I’d just shocked him witless.

“I do,” I confirmed. “She’s my brother’s best friend.”

“Your brother,” he repeated. I watched as he mentally sifted through what I’d just told him. After a long moment, his eyes brightened. “Sam,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Your brother is Sam. Right?”

A shiver ran down my spine. “You know Sam?”

“Only by name,” he said. “I know Cassie has a best friend named Sam. And Cassie happens to be the girlfriend of my…” He trailed off, eyes going distant as he seemed to search for the right word to describe the person whose girlfriend she was.

I raised an eyebrow. “The girlfriend of…” I prompted.

“Frederick. The other contact in my phone. Frederick and I are…” He dragged a hand through his hair. “We go back a long way.”

“I have a best friend like that,” I said. “Her name is Sophie. We’ve known each other since middle school.” When he didn’t say anything in response to that, I asked, “Have you and Frederick been friends since you were kids, too?”

His face darkened a little. “No,” he said. He didn’t seem inclined to clarify. Which was fair enough. He didn’t owe me an explanation.

“Well, now you have three contacts,” I said. I typed my name and number into his phone before sliding it back.

“So I do.” I handed my phone across the table to him, unable to look away from his graceful hands as he deftly added his own name and number.